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House Republicans are planning a vote Wednesday on repealing President Barack Obama's signature health care reform law, even though they know the measure has no chance of winning Senate approval. Wednesday's vote will be the first since last month's Supreme Court ruling that upheld the constitutionality of the act.

Republican Rep. Charles Boustany tells POLITICO the GOP is voting to repeal President Obama's health care law, in part, to put pressure on Democrats up for reelection. "There is a political angle to this as well," he admits in an audio interview.

House Republicans need to demonstrate that they remain true to the mandate they received in the 2010 election, which for most included a commitment to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. Now that the SCOTUS has affirmed the constitutionality of the law (albeit through a creative opinion), the House GOP faces an expectation that it will return to legislative remedies to repeal the entitlement, completely if possible and then piecemeal. Whether the Republicans succeed or not (and the prospect at this stage is not), they will lay groundwork for repeal strategies in a future Congress. This is not a trivial endeavor, and without it voters would have cause for skepticism.

Republicans also have the burden of disclosing what Obamacare might be replaced with- and that should also be a part of the debate.

This vote will drive home the point that Republicans are preoccupied with fools errands rather than confronting real problems facing the country. Independents are not with them on this but the GOP doesn't care. Thank heavens for the crazy of the right. Obama may yet win this election.

There are two reasons for a majority party in a legislative chamber to schedule a vote on a bill that they know has little chance of becoming law: to draw a clear distinction between the parties on that given issue and to force members of the minority to cast a damaging vote. But in this case, the House Republicans have already had previous votes on the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare"). So it is hard to see much upside in scheduling yet another vote on it.
The Affordable Care Act is an enigma in that the law continues to be unpopular (polls consistently show the disapproval rating beating approval around 53/42). However, when broken into individual pieces most features of the law are popular and enjoy majority support. So over the next four months, expect Republicans to focus on "Obamacare", while Democrats focus on specific features of the law.

Republicans will gain by showing their resolve to eliminate the largest government expansion in to the private sector in decades, if not history. Obamacare is unpopular amongst the electorate and a majority favor its repeal. When the bill passes the House and stalls in the Senate, Republicans can run on the issue of repeal and replace.

The vote on Wednesday to repeal RomneyCare, I mean Obamacare, is just the latest in a a series of votes crafted by the House Republican leadership that really highlight exactly how out of touch they are to the needs of working families in this country.

As far as I can tell, the only reason it is being scheduled is to pad the profits of all of the Republican consulting and media firms that will then use the votes to put together 30-second attack ads. Pathetic.

You know what else doesn’t have significant chance of being passed in the Senate? A budget. The inaction and ineffectiveness of Harry Reid’s Senate should certainly not prevent the House from voting on job-growth and economy-improving measures like the full repeal of Obamacare. The Supreme Court has presented the American people with a new choice. Will Members of Congress support the middle-class mandate tax and all of the other cost-increasing, tax-increasing and care-reducing measures in Obamacare, or will they finally realize it’s time to start over?

Obamacare remains vastly unpopular in poll after poll. Even a New York Times/CBS poll in June showed only 24% of voters wanted the bill to remain in its entirety. And the more they learn about the bill, like the assault on religious freedom imposed by the HHS mandate, the less they like. The next few months will determine once and for all whether the American people are stuck with this intolerable act or whether they are able to chart a new course with better health care, lower costs, limited government and personal liberty. The House is correct to offer this choice. And the Senate should follow their lead and hold and up or down vote on full repeal.

The only thing they have to gain is reaffirming just how small and petty they have become as a body. Someone once told me to "do what's possible". With no hope of passage in the Senate and with so much need in the nation it is incomprehensible they would waste yet more valuable time of taxpayers. As the saying goes, they are burning daylight to no good gain.

Polling shows that the public is tiring of their theatrics. I suppose this is red meat for the base and keeps the big contributions rolling in, but independents are ready to move on to the real problems facing America. Indeed, many Americans are beginning to realize that the benefits of the Affordable Care Act — coverage for young adults, more reasonable insurance premium growth, coverage of preventive services, closing the donut hole, and the promise of coverage without preexisting condition exclusions — are real, and the death panels, government takeover, implanted microchips, etc. are what they have always been, a pack of lies.

The Republicans keep voting for ACA repeal because they have no answer to the real problems facing America — like climate change (did they notice that we didn’t have a winter and that summer has been awfully hot), an economy where the rich get richer and the poor are unemployed, or our loss of democracy to a system where public offices are sold to the highest bidder.

This is strictly a base mobilization vote, intended to keep the status of ACA in doubt. But with a mjority of voters now opposing repeal, there is little to be gained politically from it. Hatred of Obama is sufficient to mobilize the Republican base and the route to support among swing voters is an unwavering focus on the sorry state of the economy.

Wednesday’s vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act will win House Republicans some love from their die-hard partisan constituents and loyal kingmakers, but won’t do much to break the current Obama/Romney tie, or push droves of undecided voters over the red side of the fence. Polls consistently show that 50 percent of registered voters rank they economy as their primary concern, but only 15 percent do the same for Healthcare. This vote should be tabled to a later date.

Elephants should use their rapidly dwindling 212th Congress time to focus on their Plan for America’s Job Creators. It’ll not only push it to the top of the political agenda, but also help Mitt Romney’s campaign. Hill Republicans could tag team with him to capitalize on the mobilization opportunity that last week’s tepid jobs reports presents. Another option is for Elephants to get a jump on some of the critical legislative issues looming over the

When an adversary was about to do something foolish, a politically wise colleague of mine used to urge, with somewhat twisted syntax, "Go ahead on!"

So I say to the Republicans, "You want to refight a battle you've already lost? Go ahead on! You want to whip up your base so badly that you'd run roughshod over the 53 percent of Americans who favor keeping the law as is or expanding? Go ahead on! You want to be on the wrong side of history and deny Americans access to life saving healthcare considered a human right in other modern industrialized nations? Go ahead on!"

And, by the way, Republicans, if you want to hand Obama a winning issue, "Go ahead on!".

"Austerity for thee but not for we the GOP" is the mantra of House Republicans collecting government healthcare, Social Security, Medicare, and farm subsidies while cutting off others.

If they want to lead by example, Republicans casting a symbolic vote to strip healthcare from millions of Americans should cancel their own government plan and embrace the freedom of the open market. But they will keep on voting no and taking the dough until the voters have our say in November.

There is always the ability to look even more like the circus clowns they are, who have no interest in actual policy, betterment of the nation or helping anyone. Unless you're rich. Really rich. Or hate some other group of people and wish to deny them their rights. Then this Republican Congress is for you.

To quote scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein on what ails Congress: "Lets just say it: Republicans are the problem...The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition."

That just about says it all. As for this specific vote, like most other things Republicans in Congress occupy themselves with these days, it is probably best to paraphrase the sage offerings of Bryce Harper. Clown move, bros.

Voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act is symbolic of the Republicans' control of the House - show over substance, political games over serious policy.

President Obama and the Democrats paid a price for focusing so heavily on health care for two years when the public was most concerned about the economy. Meaningless moves like the House vote to repeal health care reform, despite the Supreme Court's decision to uphold it, could put the Republicans in the same boat in the eyes of the public - focusing on tangential issues when voters are still worried mostly about the economy.

Republican and Independent voters hate the health care law and think it will wreck the best medical care system in the world and that it will bankrupt the federal government. There is no higher priority than repealing this awful law which has killed any chance of the economy recovering from the last session. The GOP has to show it has abandoned its big government apostasy of the Bush years if it is to regain the White House and the Senate. Voting to repeal the healthcare law is the best way for the GOP to do that.

This is a symbolic action that makes it look like Washington politicians are doing something when they really aren’t. The problem with these votes is they reinforce public cynicism that political leaders talk a lot but don’t do anything. Voters see lots of activity in D.C. but no real movement. Based on that, they conclude you can’t trust politicians to do anything.

The Supreme Court ruled. Now Americans know more about the ACA and support is up. Voting down health reform is more risky than before, although of course that varies by congressional district. But in many places, a commitment to full repeal will not be popular.

It's striking one now sees ads touting popular elements of Obamacare. Republicans will keep on charcterizing the ACA in hyperbolic terms, while Democrats focus on what the law actually does.

Obama did a tax event that is all show. At least this forces House Democrats to go on the record, especially since the Supreme Court has exploded the fiscal costs of the bill, making it even more of a catastrophe for our economy and government finances.

Dewey ClaytonProfessor of Political Science, University of Louisville :

I don’t see the Republicans gaining much by this.

They will be on record as opposing the health care reform bill (for the umpteenth time), but since the Supreme Court has given the health care law its imprimatur, this is simply political theatre. This bill will go nowhere in the Senate. It would be nice if our elected representatives (on both sides of the aisle) would spend more time doing the people’s business instead of political grandstanding.

No, they hope to stir the passions of their base with this and several other doomed measures over the next four weeks. These are election votes telling their base this is what we will do if you keep us in power and elect a majority in the Senate and a Republican in the White House.

Recent polling data suggests that a vast majority of Americans have moved on with this issue and like it or not believe Congress should get on with the business of making health care happen.

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